


One Badass Fucking Fractal

by CaptainLeBubbles



Series: A Point Called Z In the Complex Plane [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Hopeful Ending, discworld inspired, heartshaped box chapter twelve followup, spoilers for heartshaped box so don't read this till you've read that one up to chapter twelve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:44:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLeBubbles/pseuds/CaptainLeBubbles
Summary: Eternity lasts as long as it takes to eat an egg salad sandwich.





	One Badass Fucking Fractal

**Author's Note:**

> Headsup: if you haven't read up to chapter twelve of Heartshaped Box, **read that first**. This fic contains spoilers for that chapter, as it picks up right where that one leaves off.
> 
> Apologies for the Discworld elements; I couldn't let it go once I'd thought of it, and I rather like this as an end for my poor Portal Stan.

-/-

Time ended-

For an eternity, there was nothing. Or possibly not an eternity at all, since there was also no time. Stan was aware of waiting, but how long he waited was a meaningless question. At some point, he became aware that he wasn’t alone in the timeless void he’d found himself in. There was a- we’ll go with man, for lack of a better word- eating an egg salad sandwich quite contentedly.

When he noticed Stan, he startled, nearly dropping his sandwich.

“Oh,” he said. “Give me a moment, it’s my lunch break.”

Stan shrugged. “I’m in no hurry. Got nowhere to be or anything.”

“No, I suppose not.” The… man… coughed delicately. “Are you hungry? It seems rude to eat in front of you.”

“I could eat, if you’re offering.”

“One moment, then.” The man reached to his side and lifted a sack that Stan hadn’t noticed there before, and after a moment of rummaging around in it he emerged with a second sandwich. “Here you are. It’s egg salad, I hope that’s all right. For some reason that’s all I can manage.”

Stan had long since lost his ability to be picky about food. He took the sandwich and sat back (on what, he wasn’t sure; the void he was somehow existing in seemed to respond to his movements).

His companion didn’t seem in any hurry to end his break. Stan supposed it was his right; after all, time didn’t exactly exist anymore, did it?

Did it?

“Hey, so. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“You can ask.”

“What happened to Cipher?”

“Bill? He returned to the Nightmare Realm.”

“What?” Stan was standing. When had he stood up?

“Fraid so.” The man looked grim, but not particularly upset. He dabbed lightly at his mouth with a napkin. “Your actions were able to remove him from your timeline, but there are many other timelines and dimensions, many other Stanford Pineses for him to turn his attention to.”

Stan’s legs gave out from under him. He found himself sitting crosslegged. “I wanted to make him burn,” he said. “He- he killed my brothers, destroyed my home, enslaved my friends-”

“Yes. And worse, and less.” He’d finished his sandwich. “A multitude of multiverses, and his attention drawn to all of them. In some of them his actions cause at worst minor inconvenience. In some universes Stanley Pines arrives in Gravity Falls in time to stop his brother summoning Cipher at all. In others he arrives too late to prevent Cipher coming through the portal at all. Would you like to know the constant?”

Stan grunted. He was too busy thumping himself over his failure.

“Stanley Pines is the constant,” the man said. “Stanley Pines and his overwhelming, undying, unbearable, insufferable love for his brother. Bill Cipher turns his eye to Stanford Pines and in every universe and timeline, Stanley Pines is there, eventually, to knock him away. There is no timeline where Stanley Pines exists that Cipher succeeds in his plans. And in one of them, it is because of Stanley Pines that he will burn.”

“What?”

The man stood, and shouldered his sack. “You didn’t defeat Cipher in this universe, Stanley Pines, but another universe’s version of you will. I hope you can take comfort in that. Can I drop you off anywhere? This place is going to destabilize soon.”

“Oh, uh…” Stan halted, considering. Where did he want to go? He couldn’t go back to his timeline, he didn’t belong there, and seeing Stanford hurt too much, since it wasn’t  _ his _ Stanford. There was always the multiverse, of course; he’d made few friends, but he only needed one, and there were a few he wouldn’t mind seeing again. He’d left a flourishing business back in Dimension 57;-, and he could go back and continue running it.

But even as the thought came to him, he felt it drifting away. Ford wouldn’t be there for any of them. The driving force that had let Stan survive in the multiverse for twenty years would be gone, the knowledge that Ford was out there somewhere and needed to know he hadn’t killed his brother. What was even the point, then?

“Honestly?” he said finally. “I just want to see my brother.”

“Yes, I thought you might say that. Well, come along, then.”

The man with the sack led Stan through the timeless void, toward a warm light that came closer and closer and seemed to surround them. He realized at some point that he was walking alone, but barely had he registered that than he realized Ford was walking beside him. He reached out a hand and felt six fingers surrounding his.

-and then began again.

-/-

**Author's Note:**

> In case it's not apparent, Stan and the Ford from the broken timeline were reborn as the Stan and Ford of the new universe being created where theirs used to be.


End file.
